Edibles

Good gracious, how have I not updated on the edible garden since JUNE?!

When I posted it was full of promise and excitement! Look what's coming!

Weeeeell, let's go through the run-down:

Yay cherry tomatoes! All 5 of them.

Not sure if it was too much sun up on the deck or what (I really tried to be SO good with watering!), but slowly watched leaf after leaf drop until there was one twig left. 😑



Then there was the super promising huge tomato accidentally grown from seed plant!!

Whiiiich also slowly died a sad death one part of the stalk at a time. [sigh]
I did get a few tomatoes, but most of them cracked; some so much so that they dropped to the ground and were quickly consumed by... ? who exactly is eating rotting, split tomatoes, the squirrels?!

I don't think it gets enough sun down there.
I also recently asked a gardener why tomatoes split; she looks at me with pity as she answers: "Not enough water and then all of a sudden too much water."
😐
Well then.

Definitely can't be that! Doesn't sound like me at ALL!

And then at the end of the summer, the brown, dead twig suddenly starting putting out vibrant leaves at the very top...which was actually now the very bottom because it had fallen over the top of the tomato cage and limped along across the ground. Okaaay.

Oh and did I mention it's producing tomatoes!!   What?!   It's October!!


Those adorable, itty bitty peppers I was so excited about?!!!

Stayed itty bitty.  😑




We do have a million serrano peppers...if only I liked
spicy things and knew what to do with them beyond just putting one into husband's
fajitas every couple of months!


I'm now on about crop 4 of the kale. Not that I've eaten any of it, mind you. It seems to grow large, beautiful leaves just in time for me to be crazy busy and have no time to think about making a kale salad. So I leave it on the plant, fully intending to go back out, 2-3 days goes by and it once again has been skeletonized. Within a few weeks it has grown back, though smaller than the time before, and we begin the cycle all over. Genius over here, let me tell you.


   Now the berries on the other hand!
















 They did incredibly and we ate them all!
Beautiful when they were rippening! So many blackberries! (And the raspberries didn't do quite as well, but not terrible.)
The bushes were overflowing!

Yay! Good job! You grew a really successful crop of something! All it took was hard work and care and determination and pruning...............all of which was done by husband. [sigh] Maybe someday my success is coming!


This season's cilantro isn't taking off as well as I'd like :-(

 Just little bitty stalks after a few months. :-/

Some are getting there slowly, but surely.


We shall see!





But hark! What is this?!

It was peeking a bit in the photo I posted in June, but soon I had it trained to climb the pea trellis...



 And it started blossoming!

Another little accidental butternut squash!!!!

Unfortunately it became what felt like a full time job fending off those icky, awful little squash beetles I talked about before. I'd get so angry I'd smoosh them with my fingers! So gross! But I was not letting them get this plant!

It definitely involved turning over each leaf and finding the little buggers or their eggs hiding and the purge would start all over again! Insanity!

Unfortunately some of the vine has wilted away, but it's still doing ok a few months later and I have a few decent sized squashes, so we shall see!




















So here we are overall:







Explain to me why my cannas waited all summer to finally start blooming now?!


Such a mess.

And I gave up on weeding it a month ago.

That vine is just snaking its way through the whole, dying garden now!


Well, with the entrance of butternut squash and other things dying off, 'tis officially fall.....

   

...except for the summer blooming flowers, fresh green tomatoes, cilantro, mint and other herbs still going strong...  :-D Mind of it's own, these gardens have!